The gains and losses of face in ongoing intercultural interaction: A case study of Chinese participant perspectives

Abstract

Given the small number of existing studies of face in intercultural settings and the increasing attention given to participant perspectives in face research, this paper explores the gains and losses of face as perceived by Chinese government officials during a three-week delegation visit to the United States of America. These perspectives were obtained from the group's spontaneous discussions during regular evening meetings when they reflected on the day's events. Several key features emerged from the discussions. Firstly, face enhancement was a primary goal for the visit -enhancement of their own face as a delegation, of the face of the ministry they belonged to, as well as the face of their American hosts. Secondly, the delegates attempted to manage these face goals strategically. Thirdly, they spoke of face as a volatile image that could rise and fall sharply and yet endured across incidents, days and weeks. The paper reports on and discusses these participant perspectives in the light of recent theorizing on face.

Establishing Professional Intercultural Relations: Chinese Perceptions of Behavioural Success in a Sino-American Exchange Visit

“…For the Chinese delegation, multiple toasts at all the different tables was vital for showing warmth and enthusiasm, whereas for the Americans, one toast among everyone was perfectly adequate. Moreover, in this activity type (a farewell banquet), lively (热闹) behaviour was expected (an injunctive norm for effective relationship building) whereas on another occasion (not reported here for reasons of space, but see Wang & Spencer-Oatey, 2015), when the activity type was a formal professional meeting, the HoD criticized the delegates for taking photographs too enthusiastically when they entered an historic building and before the meeting started. A contextually-based approach, drawing on the notion of activity types, is also helpful for considering intercultural adjustments and advice, in that the amount of individual variation is likely to be lower than for a decontextualized approach.…”

Cross‐lagged Models of Marital Relationships and Intergenerational Conflicts during Transition to Parenthood: Effect of Patrilineal Coresidence

“…In‐laws tend to intervene in their children’s marital problems (Cao et al, 2018), given that family problems are always kept private within a Chinese family (Song & Zhang, 2012). Parents‐in‐law attempt to preserve family harmony and save face ( mianzi ) because marital problems affect couples and disgrace the family (Li, 2015; Wang & Spencer‐Oatey, 2015). Parents‐in‐law also tend to minimize the severity of major conflicts and ignore minor conflicts ( de shi hua xiao , xiao shi hau wu ; Song & Zhang, 2012).…”

Culture, Context, and Concerns About Face: Synergistic Insights From Pragmatics and Social Psychology

“…Nevertheless, we would argue that all the incidents that emerged from the corpus analysis were salient to this delegation and in the next section we report a selection of them. 3 For discussion of additional incidents, please see Wang and Spencer-Oatey (2015).…”

“… 2. For more details on the procedures used in this corpus analysis, along with a discussion of the similarities and differences between these Chinese terms, please see Wang and Spencer-Oatey (2015). …”